May 11, 2008

Clay Nelson

Pentecost Sunday     Act 2:1-21

Sentence and Prayer of the Day

Why not let people differ about their answers to the great mysteries of the Universe? Let each seek one's own way to the highest, to one's own sense of supreme loyalty in life, one's ideal of life. Let each philosophy, each world-view bring forth its truth and beauty to a larger perspective, that people may grow in vision, stature and dedication. – Algernon Black


Wind of Spirit, come


Sweep through our days.


You are a broom that disturbs, dares, and
demands of us.


You clean out the cobwebs of mediocrity and
cynicism.


You bring a desire to welcome the new within our
aging house,


That it may be warmed again and again.


Wind of Spirit,

Come Sweep through our days. – Glynn Cardy

Sometimes change is foisted upon us. Sometimes we go looking for it. Sometimes we get more than we bargained for.

Recently I decided my writing style was as tired and limited as my wardrobe. It was functional, but colourless and getting a little threadbare in the seat. It seemed that no matter what I wrote – an email to my kids, a recipe for a neighbour; a grocery list – everything sounded like a sermon.

So I enrolled in a writing class to explore other genres. The first class was on the craft of writing short stories. The first example given was a very short short story (only 202 words) by a Kiwi, Judy Parker, entitled simply “The Hat.” Sometimes, as you will hear, escaping your native genre is harder than it looks. She wrote:

The priest looked up from the psalms on the lectern, cast his eyes over the hats bowed before him. Feathered, frilled, felt hats in rows like faces. One at the end of the row different. A head without hat. A cat without fur. A bird without wings. Won’t fly far. Voices dance in song with the colours of the windows. Red light played along the aisle, blue over the white corsage of Mme Dewsbury, green on the pages of the Bible. Reflecting up on the face of the priest.

He spoke to the young lady afterwards:

“You must wear a hat and gloves in the House of God. It is not seemly otherwise.”

The lady flushed, raised her chin, strode out.

“That’s the last we’ll see of here,” said the organist.

The organ rang out, the priest raised his eyes to the rose window. He did not see the woman in hat and gloves advancing down the aisle as though she were a bride. The hat, enormous, such as one might wear to the races. Gloves, black lace, such as one might wear to meet a duchess. Shoes, high-heeled, such as one might wear on a catwalk in Paris.

And nothing else.

As I listened to this story, Pentecost’s spirited wind whistled and wailed in my ears and flames flitted and flickered before my eyes. Like seemingly drunken disciples the story preached a most unseemly and in-your-face faith. Buck-naked, tradition, worldly power, patriarchy, hierarchy, and the orthodox were put on notice by a god definitely out of her box, but wearing a hat. So much for the dream of escaping my genre.

I couldn’t help thinking that it is a new Pentecost story for our time. But more on that in a minute.

Luke’s story is just as unseemly. His is a story of chaos and disorder. God is running amok. Boundaries are crossed. Taboos are broken. The young’s visions and their elders’ dreams are being voiced in confrontational language to the established order. The old order is slipping through the fingers of power faster the harder they cling to it. The unpredictable new is in the ascendancy.

What was new in Luke’s account? Until this time religion, like politics, was local. It was a product of the culture. It reflected the values of the tribe. It gave them a sense of who was friend and who was foe. It played to their fears of the others who were beyond the tribe. It grounded their xenophobia and ethnocentrism in righteousness. It served as the glue that told its adherents who they were and who they weren’t. Religion gave people an illusion of living in an orderly and predictable world. Outside the boundaries of their religion was a place of chaos. Its inhabitants were demonic or subhuman. In the early history of Israel, those who worshipped gods outside the culture were idolaters. Identifying idolaters gave the faithful of the local religion a target for their contempt and hostility and someone to blame for their disappointments and failures.

This wasn’t true just in Israel but in most places until Jesus. Israel was amongst the first to believe in monotheism, but it was Jesus’ followers who believed that their god was everyone’s god. Universal monotheism was a Christian innovation. Upon reflection the first generation of Christians came to believe Jesus didn’t just come for the Chosen People but for the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter, the Centurion’s servant and the Samaritan leper. Luke, in telling the story of Pentecost, already knew that Christianity had spread to the edge of the known world and to its centre in Rome. It had already transcended tribe and tradition. A religion that included everyone was a revolutionary concept without precedent. A religion of the poor and powerless without an enemy or enmity and yet inclusive in its membership was as outrageous as the woman who wore a hat, gloves, shoes and nothing else.

Unfortunately universalism contains the seeds of its own undoing. On one level it is inclusive. On another it cannot tolerate diversity of belief. In its own way it is no less provincial than the ethnocentric religions that preceded it. This became clear when Christianity acquired power as the state religion of Rome. With power came oppression and intolerance. Belief in a “one true religion” no longer permitted differences. Those who did not believe in the universal faith were pagans or infidels. Conformity to religion’s expectations became more valued than transformation into the divine image. Anyone who did not wear a hat and gloves was not only a pagan but a threat to be cast out.

It would’ve been bad enough If Christianity was the only monotheistic faith claiming a monopoly on unique relevance, exclusive truth and “salvation,” but about 600 years after Pentecost Mohammad established the third great monotheistic faith equally committed to universalizing its beliefs. Crusades, pogroms and jihads were the fruit of the three monotheistic faiths grounded in their common patriarch Abraham.

This 2008 world, now shrunk by the internet, high-speed travel, immigration from places of religious carnage, has put us face-to-face with lady diversity walking brazenly down the aisle. Even in New Zealand it is inescapable even as the church tries not to notice her… um… hat. That diversity has always existed but now she lives next door. The only thing worse is when she wears a head scarf instead of a hat. Such a world calls into question how we live in community with those who we have traditionally vilified as idolaters, pagans, or infidels. The answer is not clear or obvious. But the need to do so for our own survival is.

To focus on this issue within the Christian community, there is a growing progressive movement to rebrand Pentecost Sunday as Pluralism Sunday. The motive is to transform an exclusive religion into something new: one that holds onto the inclusiveness of Pentecost while retracting exclusive claims to universal truth and salvation.

This may sound radical to us, but for most of human history most religions have not presumed to possess universal truth. This position is not taken out of ignorance of the existence of other religions, but out of a judgment that a specific religion has, at most, a claim on those who belong to the culture in which that religion is found. To be born into a culture is to inherit a religion; to be born into a different culture is to inherit a different religion. No one presumes that members of other cultures are inherently deficient; they are merely different. Buddhism and Hinduism have the position that religious diversity is inevitable, beneficial, and necessary because of human diversity. Confucianism, Taoism, and Shintoism hold that except for priests every one “belongs” to all religions, calling upon each one for different needs. The idea of exclusive loyalty to one religion is incomprehensible to their adherents [1].

Past Christian attempts to find a way to pluralism have failed miserably. They have approached the goal by trying to find in other religions commonly held beliefs. The idea being, “see they aren’t really different from us.” While on a basic human level that is true, what is really happening is a form of Christian imperialism. Based upon their commonly held beliefs "they" clearly are just as human and just as wise and moral as "we" are. “They” must participate in the same religious universe that "we" do, even if, on the surface, "their" religion seems quite different. Their religion is divine, not demonic, after all. See they are wearing hats and gloves. Labelling others as “anonymous Christians,” a label made famous by Karl Rahner, is not pluralism. It is arrogant chauvinism and unworthy of Jesus.

True pluralism begins with tolerance, which is not a virtue Christians are renowned for. But tolerance alone will not get us there. It needs to be followed by curiosity about other religions. As religious historian Max Muller has pointed out, “To know one religion is to know none.” With curiosity comes appreciation for the other as well as greater appreciation for one’s own tradition. With knowledge and appreciation comes empathetic dialogue discussing the strengths and weaknesses contained in all religions. The goal of that dialogue is not to create a new religion born of syncretism but to improve the one’s we have, that each will enrich and inspire us all no matter which faith we follow.

Because of its history and self-interest, I don’t think we can look to the institutional church to rebrand Pentecost Sunday. I think it is up to us to be wind and fire – god out of the box. If it is going to happen we must put on the new hat of pluralism, strip ourselves of the ethnocentrism and chauvinism that cloaks our faith and walk brazenly down the aisle.

[1] Rita M. Gross, Religious Diversity: Some implications for monotheism. www.crosscurrents.org/gross.htm